Democrat Al Gore got a surprise break yesterday when Florida’s all-Democrat Supreme Court blocked the state from calling the White House winner – and put the election on ice until Monday.

Now both sides must wait until Monday at 2 p.m. when the court hears arguments on whether Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris can exclude the hand counts from the official tally.

The Florida Fiasco’s latest shocker came just hours after a lower-court Florida judge cleared the way for Harris to reject the hand counts and certify Republican George W. Bush as the winner at noon today.

An angry new controversy erupted last night as overseas ballots were counted – and Republicans accused Democrats of deliberately challenging ballots from troops serving overseas for fear they’d favor Bush.

More than 1,100 of some 2,600 overseas ballots were rejected, many from counties with big military bases, often on technicalities involving military postmarks. Even so, the overseas ballots boosted Bush and more than doubled his lead from 300 to 760 with 65 of the state’s 67 counties reporting.

Bush had hoped the overseas ballots would be the final step to a quick resolution, but the Florida Supreme Court nixed that.

Tense hand counts were under way in heavily Democratic counties where Gore hopes to find enough votes to overcome Bush’s lead.

As of last night, Gore had picked up dozens of votes in those hand counts in which Team Bush claims Democratic election officials are acting subjectively and keep changing the rules to benefit Gore.

Just yesterday, Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) changed its rules to count indents (“pregnant chads”) as votes after initially saying dents don’t count. The change is expected to give Gore more votes in a heavily Democratic county.

Some Republicans claim Democrats will keep softening the rules until they validate enough votes to move Gore ahead of Bush – adding the Democrats will know exactly how many they’ll need after the overseas votes are tallied. At the painfully slow rate they are now going, the hand counts could take weeks – and in another setback for Bush, a third county, Miami-Dade, yesterday voted to join the hand counts yesterday.

The order barring Harris from calling the election was a surprise because Team Gore hadn’t even asked for it.

The order said its goal was to preserve the “status quo”, but it allowed the hand counts to go forth, and that is a central part of Gore’s strategy. He hopes he can find enough votes to pull ahead before the election can be called for Bush.

Both sides – well aware they will be arguing before the same seven Democratic judges Monday – avoided claiming the interim ruling as a victory.

But obviously Team Gore was happier because it blocked an official certification that would have boosted Bush’s claim to be America’s 43rd president.

Still, Gore lawyer David Boies said: “This is not a determination on its merits and it’s a bad idea to try to predict what the court is going to do.”

Bush’s point man, ex-Secretary of State James A. Baker, said: “We remain confident . . . the Supreme Court will find the secretary of state properly exercised her discretion” in banning new manual recounts.

But Republican strategist Bill Kristol said the all-Democrat Florida court had made “an amazing political intervention” and said he’s very worried it will tilt against Bush Monday.

The Florida Supreme Court ruling was a surprise because Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, a Democrat, had ruled just hours earlier that Harris followed his directions when she rejected the hand counts, saying counties conducting them had no justifiable excuse to delay past a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline.

“It appears that the secretary has exercised her reasoned judgment . . . My order requires nothing more,” Lewis said in a written ruling.

The escalating lawsuits spurred growing talk that Congress might step in – which it can do under the Constitution by challenging the credentials of electors by majority votes of the House and Senate.

It would also be possible for Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature to step in, even to override the Florida Supreme Court, because the U.S. Constitution gives it the ultimate authority to pick electors.

But the Florida legislature is out of session and there was no plans for it to come into emergency session.

Bush also faced two other setbacks:

* The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rebuffed the Texas governor’s bid to challenge the hand counts as subjective, biased and unconstitutional because the matter is now pending before the Florida courts.

But the federal appeals court said Bush could revive the issue later for “ultimate review in the U.S. Supreme Court” – where many analysts predict it will wind up.

* Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest, flipflopped and agreed to conduct a hand count after Democratic Gore allies threatened to sue to force one.

That means three counties are now conducting hand counts – the others are Broward (which also originally voted no on hand counts but flipflopped under Democratic pressure) and Palm Beach.